Thursday, 24 December 2015

Some Thoughts on the Christmas Message of David Robertson, Free Church of Scotland

Recently David Robertson, Moderator of the Free Church of
Scotland, delivered a Christmas message where he said society was becoming a
monochrome culture where genuine diversity was being undermined by a “mob mentality which threatens
anyone who dares to be against the ‘equality and diversity’ agenda” [1].His address was treated to considerable
negative comments, illustrating the very point he was trying to make [2]. One
newspaper headline put it “Twitter mob puts free speech in peril” [3].

The point David Robertson was making is that it is now very
hard for Christians to express their views in the public sphere as the climate
has shifted to a liberal humanist position that denies core Christian beliefs,
values and morality [4]. As the balance of beliefs has shifted those opposed to
Christianity find it easier to express their views, often in quite hostile
tones.

I think anyone who has observed the changes in political
correctness over the years will have noticed this trend. What was unacceptable
in the past is acceptable now and vice versa. Essentially there are two
competing ideologies: the Christian one of the past, and the Humanist one now
[4]. What David Robertson has described in his message is an example of a System
Dynamics archetype called “Success
to the Successful” [5].

Consider two competing opinions 1 and 2. The number of
people who hold opinion 1 will influence the amount of expression of opinion 1,
top right in the “casual loop” diagram below. The more people, the more
expression – the plus on the arrow means “change the same way”, i.e. “more” in
this case. The more expression of opinion 1 the more the climate of society
favours opinion 1. The better the climate for opinion 1 the more confidence
people have in expressing the opinion. The greater the confidence the more
opinions expressed. This is the reinforcing feedback loop R1 in the diagram.

On its own reinforcing feedback will give accelerating
growth, limited only by the physical ability and need to express opinions.
Without any competitors society favours opinion 1.

However if there is a competing opinion, number 2, then
there is now a parallel structure, except that this one moves the climate away
from 1, towards 2. The more
expression of opinion 2 the less the climate of society favours 1 – the minus
on the arrow. If the climate now favours 1 less then there will be more
confidence in expressing opinion 2 – the minus sign means the change is the
opposite way to the cause. This gives a second reinforcing feedback loop R2.

Let’s say opinion 1 is Christian and opinion 2 is Humanist.
While Christianity was strong in society loop R1 was dominant and loop R2 would
make little effect, keeping humanism as a small non-influential minority. The
essence of the success to the successful archetype is the one side excludes the
other; there is no healthy coexistence, but competitive exclusion.

However two things have happened over the years. Firstly, as churches have got weaker and declined, the number of Christians, those
holding opinion 1, top right hand corner of the above diagram, has declined, thus the
link to expressions of opinion 1, the Christian opinions, has declined
weakening R1.

Secondly those sympathetic to the humanist position have
been able to have more influence on the ruling and media elites, who in turn
have been able to take actions to favour the humanist opinion – thus
strengthening R2. As R2 has come to dominate over R1, many more in power and in
the media have jumped on the bandwagon making R2 stronger still.

Thus it looks like Christianity in its traditional and Bible
believing forms is heading for exclusion by an intolerant humanism promoting an
ideology of diversity, equality and tolerance! Irony intended. Success to the successful,
and the winner is humanism!

A few things need to be remembered.

1. In many countries now, and in the past,
Christianity has been excluded from the public stage. In fact that is where Christianity
started and remained for 300 years. It survived, it grew, people were saved,
God was glorified.

2

2. Most people are not ardent supporters of
either Christianity or humanism and don’t express strong opinions. Thus they do
not appear in the casual loop diagram above. Ideological battles are usually fought
out by minorities. But over time people without strong views get attracted to
one of the ideologies, usually to the nicer one. In the past Christianity won
out over paganism because Christians treated people better. How we as
Christians conduct ourselves in the current climate will be just as important as
the things we say. Some of the current political correctness is really nasty
and dictatorial, Christians must not respond in kind.

3. The
call on the church is to make converts. If Christians put more effort into
personal witness and seeking converts, and concern themselves less with
changing the climate of society, then it will in time lead to an increase in
the number of people following Christianity. This personal witness is a reinforcing loop, R3, increasing the most important
variable – the number of Christian believers – those with opinion 1. See diagram below. Some of
those converts will come from opinion 2 – the humanists, which will further
weaken the hold of humanism on society R2.

4. We also need to remember that God
is real, He created everything, controls everything and He is not in the
business of losing! Christians take your confidence from Jesus, his power and
his call, not from the climate of society.

OK this is highly simplified and you may be able to think of
all sorts of things to add to the diagrams, but hopefully it gives an
indication of how system dynamics and systems thinking can give insight into current
issues that affect the church. Sorry it is a bit rushed - but Christmas beckons - Alleluia!

References

[1]Moderator's Festive Message, David Robertson, reproduced on the Free Church Web Site
23/12/15

[4] By “Christian” I mean the part of the Christian
church that believes that beliefs, values and morality are revealed by God and
are thus unchangeable. By Humanism I mean that these things are determined by
people and can be changed from what they have been in the past. The contrast is
whether the source of authority is God-centred or man centred. People do not
fall neatly into the two fixed categories. Humanistic thinking pervades the
Christian church and not just the “liberal” part. Politicians can defend Britain
as a “Christian” country by claiming some of its values, even though they have
on other occasions supported beliefs contrary to revealed Christian belief. See
today’s Christmas message from the Prime Minister saying that we are a "Christian" country. But what he means by Christian may not mean what a Bible-believing Christian means.

Tuesday, 8 December 2015

In my last blog [1] I showed
that the primary cause of decline for the Presbyterian Church of Wales (aka
Calvinist Methodists) in the 20th century was due to a large drop in
conversions into the church. Additionally there was also a much smaller drop in
birth rate, though not in child retention. From this result I further suggested that lack of conversion
was (and still is) the primary cause of decline across most of the pre-20th
century UK denominations [2].

The purpose of this
follow up blog is to show that the high rate of conversions in the 19th
century came from repeated bursts of revival, and that the drop in conversions
came when these revivals ceased. The lack of revival is the underlying cause of
church decline. Again I will use data from the Presbyterian Church of Wales as
typical of denominational behaviour.

Firstly, a definition. A
revival is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church, giving believers an
awareness of God’s presence. The result is that they become more effective at
witness, leading to more converts, many of whom also catch the revival fire [3].

Revival Enhances Church Growth

The rich data set for the
Presbyterian Church, including the number of conversions, only starts in 1895 [4].
Unfortunately most of the revivals in Wales occurred before this date. However one
revival, the famous 1904/5 one, occurs in this period, and the 1905 conversion
rate can be compared with a more typical period, such as 1896-1900 when the
church was still growing, figure 1.

Figure 1

During the revival the
conversion rate jumps from 1.2% to 6%, that is a five-fold increase. Even
though the reversion rate rises it is clear that revival had a massive effect
on conversion. Note that there was also a modest increase in the number of
members’ children joining the church, however the biggest effect of the revival
is conversion from outside the church
[3]. The work of the Holy Spirit in believers, brings conversion into the
church, and thus church growth.

Even though revivals
often come in short bursts the cumulative effects of repeated short
burst would increase the average rate of conversion in those periods. There
were at least 15 revivals in Wales between 1762 to 1862 [5], so it is possible
the high rate of 1.2% in conversion by 1900 was a residue from those earlier revival
periods. Without further revivals that conversion rate fell, figure 2, and had
dropped to 0.46% by the 1960s [1]. Figure 2 shows the dramatic effect of the
last Welsh Revival on conversion into the church. Similar increases were seen
across the Welsh denominations.

Figure 2

Previously [1] I
introduced the first church decline hypothesis: Church decline is due to lack
of conversions. I now go further.

Second Church Decline
Hypothesis

Church Decline is Caused
by Lack of Revival

More specifically while
revivals occurred the conversion rate was high and the church grew rapidly.
When revivals ended the conversion rate fell and the church subsequently
declined. This can be demonstrated using known and estimated data.

Known Data

In order to investigate
the effect of the revivals on church growth up to 1862, the proportion of the
church with respect to the Welsh population is analysed using known data [4,6].
If it assumed that the birth rate of the church is similar to society, and
there are no documented reasons to believe otherwise, then any increase in the
proportion of the church in society must mean there are conversions from
outside the church. This will be true even if they have 100% child retention
and no reversion [7]. Thus it will be possible to tell if revival correlates
with conversion.

Figure 3 shows the
proportional membership of the Welsh Presbyterians from 1860. It peaks in 1875
at 18.29% of Welsh society, after which the church is no longer keeping pace
with the rapid population growth [8]. Population growth is smooth between 1850
to 1900, thus it cannot be the source of the change in proportion, which is
sharp in the 1870s, figure 3, as reflected in the raw membership (figure 5 see
later).Thus the conversion rate
appeared to fall significantly in the 1870s.

Figure 3

What are the
alternatives? The sharp change could be due to a dramatic change in child
retention. However it does not change much during 1895 – 1968 and then it is
quite smooth [1]. So this is rejected

Likewise the change could
be an increase in reversion. But with reversion at only just over 1% in 1896
there is not enough leverage for such a dramatic change. It would need a church
where no-one was leaving 1800-1870, which is very unlikely.

Thus it is concluded the
main change in the proportion of church members in society was a drop in conversion rate after the main
period of revivals. It was not that conversion stopped; there had to be
some to make up for 50% child retention and a 1% reversion rate [7]. But from
the mid 1870s conversion must have fallen to a figure around 1.2% from one that
had been higher, presumably due to the previous revivals.

Estimated Early Data

Although there is no data
for the Welsh Presbyterian Church in the public domain prior to the 1860s, its
rise from the 1735 can be estimated by assuming it starts from zero, and
broadly follows the pattern of the related English Wesleyan movement [9]. Such
an estimate is given in figure 4, with known revivals in Wales superimposed on
the graph [5,10].

Figure 4

Revivals have been
categorised as national, covering
most of Wales, regional, about the
size of a county, and local, confined
to a village, town or a few churches. The national revivals are subdivided
further into intense, where the
revival spread through Wales very fast, lasting only a short period of time,
and extended, where the spread across
Wales took longer, perhaps due to communication speed in a rural environment.
The date for the extended revival thus marks the start of the work, which may
have lasted a number of years. The two intense revivals are the most famous,
1859/60 and 1904/5, as the large number of converts across all denominations,
110,000 and 100,000 respectively, came in a very short space of time, and were
thus better recorded [10,11]. These divisions could be contested but there are
only proposed to give a flavour of the frequency and size of the revivals in
Wales [5,10].

Figure 4 clearly shows
that the proportional growth of the church correlates with the repeated
outbreaks of revival, with the largest growth in the decade after the 1859/60
revival. Proportional growth means significant conversion growth. By contrast
proportional decline correlates with the lack of revivals. The turning point occurs
from 1870s onwards. The only major revival left is the 1904/5 one, but of all
the revivals, this has the least effect on the church and was followed by
decline – very much a revival out of its time [12]. Whatever went wrong in
church, it occurred decades before the last revival, around the 1870s.

Compare the same revivals
with actual membership figures. The 1904/5 revival marks then end of growth for
the church, the end of the age of universal revivals in Wales, ones that lead
to national church growth. Again this graph makes clear that after the rapid
growth following the 1859/60 revival then growth slowed to a halt. There were
now less revivals. The church was now failing to keep up with the rapidly
growing population [8]. Growth picked up from 1890 but peaked in the last
revival. Again growth only occurred as long as there were revivals.

Figure 5

Compare Conversion Rates

Although the early
figures for the Presbyterian Church are estimated it is possible to construct a
conversion rate for the period. The estimated figures indicate that the acceleration
in growth starts around 1800, figure 5. In reality it could have occurred later,
or earlier, than this. What is known is that from 1767 to 1869 there was an average
growth rate of 3.65%. If it were lower in some periods it must have been higher
in others.

Now assume a conservative
estimates of deaths: 1% per year –
similar to 1890s and much lower than the national average due to the church
having a young age profile; assume a leaving
rate of 1.2% per year – similar to 1890s; assume a biological growth rate of 1.7% to 2.1% depending whether 50% to 60%
of members’ children are retained, similar or better than 1890s.

Making these assumptions the
average conversion rate from 1767 to 1869 would have been 3.75% to
4.15%. This is much higher than the 1890s figure of 1.26%, implying that the
conversion rate had waned once the effects of the last 19th century
revival were no longer felt.

Note also the 3.75% to
4.15% conversion rate is an average figure. They will have been periods
where this figure will have been lower and of course some higher – perhaps as
high as the 6% of the 1904/5 revival.However in that revival the high conversion rate was temporary. From
1760s to 1870s the high conversion rate was ongoing. There is no doubt that internal
migration and church planting would have helped keep the rate high. But such an
increase of the presence of the church in new communities is one of the
by-products of revival, so this feature is expected. Without conversions new
churches cannot be planted!

Conclusion

Thus I conclude that revival was the primary cause of the high
conversion rate, which in turn was the cause of church growth.

Conversely the lack of
revivals after 1859-60 was the cause of the decline in conversion rate and
ultimately the decline of the church. Again there is no difficulty in extending
this conclusion across the other denominations. Thus it is clear the lack of revival is the primary cause of
church decline, as without revival the church cannot convert enough people
to grow.

This now begs the
question as to why revivals have ended, or whether there were any other
explanations for the decline, which might also explain the ending of revivals?
I will leave a discussion of these for another blog.

Notes & References

[2] By pre-20th
century denominations I mean: Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and
Congregational across England, Wales and Scotland. Decline is also true for
Baptists but not to the same degree or pattern. Brethren and Salvation Army do
not follow the standard decline pattern. Pentecostalism, which is largely
growing, did not start until the 20th century. The post-1960
churches are a mixture of growth and decline.

[3] Revival is initially
a work in believers, giving them an
intense experience of the presence of God, a baptism of the Holy Spirit as at
Pentecost. The result of the revival
is that revived Christians are more effective at witnessing Christ to people,
thus more people in the church catch the fire, and more people from outside the
church are converted. Although passing on the fire to unbelievers and believers
can explain much of the progress of a revival, which is why it has similar
dynamics to the spread of the disease, there is nevertheless some mystery as
well. Some people get an awareness of God just from being close to the locality
of a revival, without having any contact with anyone. Some are filled with the
Spirit or converted spontaneously. Some catch the fire through hearing of the
revival by second-hand means such as media reports.

[7] If the church’s child
retention were similar to the known period then it would be 50-60%.
Additionally reversion would be around 1%. See previous blog [1]. Thus in a
church growing proportionally there will be some conversions making up for
these losses.

[8] The population of
Wales is given in figure 6 using census data and other historical sources*. The
early figures are less reliable than the later ones. The rapid rise in
population occurs along with the industrial revolution and ceases after World
War 1 with emigration. The reasons for the rapid 19th century rise
are complex and will be touched on in a subsequent blog.

Roderick,
F. and McCloskey, D.N. (1981). The
Economic History of Britain Since 1700: Volume 1, Cambridge University
Press.

Wrigley, E.A. and Scofield, R.S.
(1989). The Population History
of England, 1541-1871:
a reconstruction, Cambridge University Press.

Office of National
Statistics, Census Data.

[9] The Presbyterian
Church of Wales were Calvinist Methodists and were a parallel movement in
Wales, and initially in Welsh, to the English Methodists, who were largely
Wesleyan in belief and organisation. Both were initially movements within the
established Church of England and were not recognised as churches until the first
generation had passed, 1790s-early1800s. Thus their spread can be expected to
be similar.

I compared the figures of
the Welsh and Wesleyan Methodists where they were both known and noted that
their proportions of society were diverging. I extrapolated that divergence
back to the 1700s using known data for the Wesleyan Methodists, so that the
Welsh Methodists were zero in 1735, the year the movement started.

Comparing with Jones [5] the number and duration of revivals are not
easy to determine as the work spreads from region to region. The indicated date
for many of the revivals is the year they start according to [5,10], and they
may extend for a number of years.

[12] I would suggest the
1904/5 revival was not primarily about Wales but the world. Many missionary
movements and revivals trace their origins to this Welsh Revival (see Gibbard).
Pentecostalism both in the UK and the USA is directly linked to the revival (See
Pike, Livesay, Synan, Bartleman), and is the fastest growing revival movement
in history. The 1904/5 Welsh Revival was God’s way of bringing revival to the
world!

Gibbard, N. (2004). On the Wings
of A Dove: The International Effects of the 1904-05 Revival, Evangelical
Press.

Friday, 6 November 2015

In my last blog, Closing
Rural Churches [1], I said that no strategy to reverse church decline would
work unless it deals with the root cause of decline, the church’s failure to recruit sufficient people to counteract its
losses. In this post I will put forward evidence that lack of conversions
is the primary cause of church decline in the UK since the end of the 19th
century.

I will investigate this hypothesis by looking at data for the
Presbyterian Church of Wales, (aka the Calvinist Methodists), one of the few
denominations to record conversions, the children of members who join,
transfers within the church, leavers and deaths. This data set was reproduced
by Currie et al for 1895-1968 [2].

First Church Decline Hypothesis [3]

Church Decline is Caused by Lack of Conversions

Stated more specifically, the fall in membership across most
of the pre-1900 denominations is due to their inability to keep conversion at
the level of the 19th century. The Presbyterian Church of Wales is
typical of this decline, as shown in the membership figures for the whole
church [4], figure 1.

Figure 1

The church started in the mid 1730s and had risen fast in
the early part of the 19th century. That rapid rise continued until
1905, the end of the last national revival in Wales, and has declined since.

To show that lack of conversions is the primary cause of
this decline, compare the different growth and loss rates for 1896-1900 with
1964-1968, figure 2. Growth comes from two sources: the children of church
members becoming members themselves once they have reached adulthood, called biological
growth; and conversions, the people who join from outside the church. The
losses also have two sources: deaths of members; and reversion, the total of
those who resign membership, those expelled, and the discrepancy in the
transfers between different congregations of the denomination [5].

Figure 2

At the end of the 19th century the conversion
rate of 1.20% was higher than the reversion rate of 1.12%. However by the 1960s
the conversion rate has dropped to a mere 0.4%, with reversion at 1.74%. The dramatic
drop in the number of conversions is a significant factor in the change from
growth to decline of the church.

A second cause of decline is the drop in biological growth,
the children of members. This drop is smaller than that of conversions, and is in
line with the general decline of the national birth rate from 2.86% in the late
1800s to 1.61% in the 1960s. Remarkably the child retention rate has improved
from 51% to 60%. Thus though the national drop in birth rate has
contributed to church decline, the church’s ability to keep its own children is
not a contributory factor.

The third cause of decline is the rising death rate. In the
1890s the death rate of the church, 0.83%, is less that the national death rate
of 1.7%, suggesting the church at that time was significantly younger than the population.
By the 1960s the church death rate has risen to 1.68% much higher than the
national death 1.18%, indicating an older than average church. Thus aging is a
factor in the church’s decline.

So why has the church aged? Some if it is obviously
demographic, falling birth rate. However the church has aged more than society,
and was significantly younger than society at the end of the 19th
century. I suggest that this relative youthfulness was due to the higher
conversion rate, as conversions generally occur when people are younger. By the
same reasoning the lack of conversions in the twentieth century has caused the
church to age faster than society.

Thus whether directly, or indirectly through aging, lack of
conversion is the root cause of the Presbyterian Church’s decline.

Let me investigate some alternative explanations.

Was Child Retention a Cause of Church Decline?

As already stated, the church’s child retention rate in the
1960s was better than it had been at the end of the 19th century.
Figure 3 shows that the child retention rate has generally improved slightly
from 1895 to the late 1950s. Its fall in the early 1960s is neither large nor
systematic.

Figure 3

Though it has been common to blame the church’s inability to
keep their children as a cause of its decline, figure 3 clearly shows this is
not the case. Of course the birth rate has fallen during this time, and that
may have led churches to think that their older profile reflected their lack of
attraction to the young. However, in common with the rest of society, they were
not producing children in sufficient numbers to keep themselves young [6].
Child retention remained good and was not a cause of decline.

Were Emigration and War Causes of Church Decline?

The changes in the sources of growth and decline can be tracked
from 1896 to 1968. Figure 4 shows falling biological growth together with the
rising death rate of the church; the former due to falling national birth rates.
The gap between these represents the aging profile of the church. Ignoring the
temporary rise in deaths during the First World War, the aging process really
starts in the 1920s. Some of this would be due to emigration between the wars
as seen in the population figures for Wales. But as the narrowing of the gap
with the biological growth continues, and then becomes negative as deaths
exceed child retention, emigration cannot be the sole cause [7].

Figure 4

Likewise the effects of war are confined to 1914-1918 alone.
The Second World War had little effect on the general trend of death rates, in
fact they temporarily improved. Biological growth fell during this war, but
only in line with the fall in birth rate 15 years previously. It rose again in
the 1960s when the post war baby boomers became eligible for membership [7]. Thus
neither war had any ongoing impact on the church’s decline.

Was Church Decline Caused by a Higher Leaving Rate?

The conversion and reversion (leaving) rates are given in
figure 5, with the very high conversion rates for the 1904-5 revival excluded
[8]. Before the revival the evidence is that conversion was just higher than
reversion, though during the revival the conversion rate became massively
higher, over 6%. After the revival reversion rises temporarily, although
nothing like the level of the revival’s conversion rate.

Figure 5

The cause of the temporary rise in reversion may have been due
new converts disillusioned with a church largely unaffected by the outpouring
of the Spirit. Rather than abandoning Christianity the leavers formed
independent mission churches and became part of the emerging Pentecostal
movement, an offspring of the revival [9].

The only other significant change in reversion rate is
during and after the Second World War. The lack of people leaving during the
war is counter-balanced by a larger number leaving in1947-8, possibly a delayed
effect due to people returning from the war.

Generally reversion has remained steady around 1.5% and has
not contributed to the increasing decline of the church. Rather, as figure 4
makes clear, decline has come from the falling conversion rate.

What if the 1890's Conversion Rate Had Been Maintained?

The membership figures for the Welsh Presbyterian church can
be adjusted assuming the pre 1904-5 revival conversion rates had been
maintained.Comparing them with
the actual membership figures shows that although the church would have still
declined, it would have done so far more slowly, figure 6.

Figure 6

As such 58% of the church decline was due to the falling
conversion rate, with most of the remainder due to the falling national birth
rate and the aging of the church, the latter also partly due to lack of
conversion.

Thus I conclude that lack of
conversion is the root cause of the Presbyterian Church’s decline.

Revival

It is clear from figure 6 that maintaining the conversion
rate would not have been sufficient to prevent decline. This is because even at
the end of the 19th century the conversion rate was only just higher
than the reversion rate; so that the church required high biological growth to
help it keep growing, figure 2. There is a suggestion here that the late 1800s
conversion rate was already inadequate for a church seeking to grow as a
proportion of society.

Thus the 20th century decline, due to lack of
conversions, was continuing a trend that had started even before 1895. The next
blog will attempt to link this lack of conversions to the lack of revival in
the church.

Conclusion

Although the study was just for the Welsh Presbyterian
Church, nevertheless there is no reason to believe it is any different to the
Methodist, Congregational, Anglican and Baptist churches, or those in Scotland
and England, all of whom declined throughout the twentieth century.

I thus conclude that the primary cause of
twentieth century church decline is the poor conversion rate.

[3] In a subsequent blog I will illustrate a second church
growth hypothesis that church growth is caused by revival. I will show that it
is the lack of revival that lies behind the lack of conversions of the
twentieth century onwards.

[4] The figures used are full members plus adherents, called
the whole church by Currie et al. The
Presbyterian Church of Wales had two classes of members. All could participate
in most aspects of church life, but only the full members could attend the
experience meeting, the seiat, seen as a high
privilege.

Membership and adherent figures are known from 1860 (Williams,
J., 1985. Digest of Welsh Historical
Statistics. UK: Government Statistical Service HMSO.) However he does not
record conversions, deaths etc.

From 1970 onwards membership data is taken from various
publications by Brierley, see http://www.churchmodel.org.uk/growthrefs.html#stats
As he only records full members not adherents the whole church is estimated by
linearly interpolating from the shrinking gap between full membership and the whole
church from 1950-1968 onwards.

[5] Most transfers were due to geographical mobility. For
most years more people transfer out, compared with those who transfer in,
presumably because people fail to take up their membership in the new church.

Conversions are called Probationers
from Without by Currie et al.

Biological growth comes from Currie’s Children of the Church.

[6] It is highly likely that child retention has fallen since
the 1960s. One estimate puts Christian child retention at around 30%, in
contrast to the much higher rate among Muslims. See Intergenerational Transmission of Islam in England and Wales: Evidence
from the Citizenship Survey, by J. Scourfield, C. Taylor, G. Moore, and S.
Gilliat-Ray, Sociology, 46(1):
91-108, 2012.

[7] The loss of young men in the First World War, and emigration
of largely younger people in the 1920s and 1930s, are often blamed as the cause
of church decline. As the above analysis shows these are temporary effects. Each of these has could have three effects seen in: (a) falling church
membership, (b) falling biological growth 15-20 years down the line, and (c) rising death rates well into the future.

(a) Although there is an increasing slope of decline in
church membership from 1920, (figure 1), about the right time for an emigration
effect, the leaving rate tells a different story. At the end of the 19th
century the leaving rate averaged 1.1%, 3432 people per year. This increased from
1901-1904 to 1.21%, 4004 people per year. However from 1908, post revival to
the start of World War One this increased dramatically to 1.46% 4961 people per
year. From 1920-1935 the leaving rate then dropped to 1.45%, 4392
people per year; the still high percentage being due to a smaller church, rather than
an increase in the number leaving, which had in fact dropped. Thus it is very difficult to prove that
emigration had a large direct effect on church decline. The increasing rate of
decline had started prior to the revival and was increased by the effects of
the revival, both pre-war effects..

(b) Loss of young people in the war and through emigration
would hit the birth rate during those times. The lowest birth rate is that of 1933
at 1.44%, compared with an average pre First World War birth rate of 2.5%. However
the 1950s birth rate only recovers to an average of 1.6%. Birth rates were
falling naturally apart from emigration and war effects. The biological growth of
the church does fall from around 1.3% pre World War 2 to just over 1% in the 1940s
and 1950, figure 4. Some of this is the ongoing effects of aging due to prior emigration
and world war 1, but some will be due to aging through lack of conversions. The
biological growth rate recovers briefly in early 1960s, but then has fallen
further by 1968, suggesting an ongoing aging of the church, not just one due to
fixed events such as emigration and war. As the
church was only keeping 50% of its young people it must have conversions in
order to stop aging as well as stopping decline.

(c) The expected increase
in death rate due to emigration and World War 1 losses would not be expected to
be seen until the 1960s onwards. Much of this is later than the cut off period,
1968, in this data set.

[8] In the next blog, on the effect of revival on conversion
and growth, these data points will then be included.

[9] For discussion of the disillusionment of revival
converts see:

Jones, B.P. (1999). How
Lovely are Thy Dwellings, Wellspring Books. Describes the beginnings of
mission halls and Pentecostal assemblies after the 1904-5 revival.

Livesay, J. (2000). When We Walk with the Lord, published by
the author, New Zealand, ISBN 0-473-06831-1. Describes the beginnings of the
Apostolic Church, the Pentecostal Church that started in Wales after the
revival.

Saturday, 17 October 2015

Is This the Way to Church Growth?

Recently in an article for the Guardian newspaper Giles
Fraser suggested the Church of England should do to its churches what Beeching
did to the railways, close its underused rural parishes. He further proposed
concentrating resources in churches in “minster” type churches for the purpose
of re-evangelisation [1].

Rural churches he claimed needed to close as half of them
had less then 20 in the congregation, a quarter under 10. The overstretched ministers
released from these churches could be placed in the minster congregations of “a
community of clergy –some pastors, some evangelists, some theologians”, the
team to lead the re growth of the church, making congregations “worth
travelling to”, to quote Fraser’s words.

My first reaction was to cringe that the answer to the
church’s decline was seen to be yet more theologians and clergy, the two types
of ministry not mentioned in the New Testament [2]! However these are serious
proposals by Giles Fraser and deserve consideration.

The effectiveness of any strategy for re-growing the church
depends on whether it can tackle the root cause of church decline, the church’s failure to recruit sufficient
people to counteract its losses [3]. From my modelling I would express the
hypothesis this way:

Church
decline is caused by the inadequate production of enthusiasts, the spiritually “infectious”
Christians who make new converts and thus generate more enthusiasts.

This process creates a reinforcing feedback loop and is the
engine that drives revival growth, the growth that took the church to its peak
at the beginning of the twentieth century [4,5,6]. This way Christianity grows
in a similar pattern to a disease.

Figure 1: Generation of Enthusiasts - the Engine of
Revival Church Growth

So to the two proposals, concentrating on issues of growth
and decline, not the pastoral implications.

1. Closing Rural Churches

a.Closing rural churches might cut parts of the
country off from Christian witness altogether. This reduces the potential pool
of converts and would slow church growth, perhaps put the church further under
the extinction threshold [4]. It would have to be demonstrated that these rural
churches have virtually no conversion/witness and thus nothing was being lost
by their closure.

b.Although 50% of rural churches are under 20 that
does not mean they are small. This number could be a significant fraction of
their community, more so than many inner city churches. Small communities have
small churches, and small communities are not going away. They need Jesus and
closing a church denies them access to salvation, as well as further reducing
denominational recruitment.

c.It is not just the size of the church that is
important but its spiritual life. A church of 20 people on fire for God will be
more likely to see growth and conversion than a large church full of
ineffective and spiritually dead people. It is LIFE that matters. A small
number of enthusiasts can lead to large future growth of the church [4]. It was
Dr DM Lloyd-Jones who said that putting six graveyards together does not bring
the dead to life, just gives a bigger graveyard [7]! Merging and combining
small churches does not in and of itself bring spiritual life. Neither do communities
of clergy.

d.If the issue is the resourcing of a professional
minister then do without one. Train the people in the church to act as its
elders and teachers. Perhaps the Church of England needs to return to a
Biblical every member ministry pattern for rural churches. Learn from the
Brethren!

e.If the issue is the maintenance of the building
then manage without the building. But the building is not the church, and
closing the building does not mean closing the church. Buildings that outlive
their usefulness need to be let go so people are not burdened with their
maintenance. This could mean mothballing them for a future that may need them
again. It would not be the first period in history that church buildings went
into serious disrepair, only the be renewed generations later. If sold for
redevelopment that strategy would be lost.

f.It is unclear that selling ancient buildings for
demolition and development would ever be allowed to happen. The delays involved
would mean the resources would not be available for years, perhaps too late. It
is unclear that people would even want to develop in such spots. There are many
redundant and under used parish buildings in cities. The buildings are less ancient;
their sale would be easier and probably fetch a better price.

g.If the purpose of closing rural churches is to
generate capital, then it is unclear that having more money would improve
mission. More paid clergy in towns and cities may well stifle work to empower
all Christians [2]. Ironically declining churches can be wealthier than growing
ones as they contain both older and more committed people [8]. Shortage of
money is not the issue. The issue with church decline is primarily spiritual,
not financial. This kind does not
come out by money but by prayer and
fasting, Mark 9:29!

h.I can understand how a large church at a
distance from rural areas can be used to replant Christianity in areas with no
church. But at some point someone needs to travel to the rural area and the
same issue of small numbers using a large amount of resource will resurface,
with the added burden of having a fresh start. Better not to lose them in the
first place.

Thus the proposal to close many rural churches has issues. However
if the strategy were one of keeping spiritually lively fellowships of
believers in rural areas, but freeing them from reliance on paid clergy
and the need to maintain a building, which could be closed if unfit for use,
then the idea may have merit [9]. It would then be worth trying as in the next 10
years many of these churches will close naturally, so the risk factor in
closing them early is not that high.

2. Concentration of Resources in “Minster” Churches

a.Care would be needed to ensure that the
buildings in which the “resource concentrated” church meets are big enough.Whereas a church building that is too
big may be a waste of resource, a building that is full each Sunday seriously
hinders growth by lack of capacity. This is why churches in the past always
built buildings with far more capacity than needed at the time.

b.Positively, the concentration of enthusiasts,
and of believers, in one place is a driver of church growth [5]. Figure 2 shows
the engine of growth, loop R, enhanced with other processes. Firstly the
renewal loop, R1. The more enthusiasts the more engagement with
non-enthusiastic members renewing them to infectiousness, whether they had it
before or not. Also the spiritual life loops.The more enthusiasts interact, pray, worship, do Bible
training, the more effective they become. They now have a spiritual disease
that is more infectious, leading to
more effective renewal, R2, and more effective conversion, R3. It can be shown
that a critical mass of enthusiasts and church size can trigger this enhanced
revival process [5].

c.Churches with concentrated resources are also
called Flagship Churches, ones that reproduce themselves in other churches [10];
and Infectious Centres of Spiritual Health [11], places where Christians are
set on fire again for God. These are not “minster” churches as such as the
concentration is of every member ministries, not paid clergy. They can be seen
in many denominations and not surprisingly are in areas of large population.
Although they can have a big influence in their own city, e.g. Holy Trinity
Brompton in London, it is not clear they have been able to help rural areas. In
principle it could work, but some research would be needed.

Giles Fraser’s proposal to concentrate resources is a good
idea, has been effective in the past, and is still effective in the growth of
churches in London and many of the newer charismatic congregations.

But it comes with a proviso. It is not just about creating churches that are worth coming to,
though that definitely helps. It is about creating people that are worth living like. Ones whose lives are worth copying.
People who have a passion for God, in the person of Jesus, through the work of
the Holy Spirit. People who are willing to take sacrifices to ensure the lost
are saved, out of sheer compassion for eternal souls. People who live in the
light of eternity, not the need of the moment. People who are determined not to
follow the self-centred and hedonistic spirit of this and any other age, but
see a world transformed where people can live as God intended them to live.

It is not about church, but about people.

It is not about saving an institution, but saving souls.

Notes and References

[1] We must do to our churches what Beeching did to
the railways. Giles Fraser,
The Guardian, 15/10/15.

[2] I am OK
with pastors and evangelists, but what happened to apostles, prophets and
teachers; overseas and deacons?

As all organisations grow there is a tendency to oligarchy
and the development of a separate leadership class from the led.

(See Michels R.
(1961) [1911]. Political Parties: A
Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, NY,
The Free Press).

Professional clergy is how this oligarchy is manifested in
the church, and most other religions, often called a priest, but not always. The
name is irrelevant, the concept is that a subset of people become essential to
the functioning of the organisation, and the organisation has made supporting
them its priority. This oligarchy is part of the institutionalism that hinders
the growth of the church and has assisted its decline. See the blog Institutionalism
and Church decline

Christian leaders are essential, and they can be more
effective when paid full-time. But their role was never to replace the people
of the church and become the sole ministers, a separate priestly class, rather it
was to encourage all the church to pursue ministry, especially witness and
evangelism.When times are lean,
paid leaders are a luxury the church cannot afford and the church needs to
learn to manage without them, as it does in many parts of the world where,
ironically, the church grows.

[3] In a subsequent blog I will demonstrate the hypothesis
that churches decline now compared with the past because of their failure to
recruit.

[4] See

Hayward J. (2002). A Dynamical Model of Church Growth and its
Application to Contemporary Revivals. Review
of Religious Research, 43(3),218-241.

[6] In a subsequent blog I will give examples to show that the church
growth of the past primarily came through revival.

[7] Lloyd-Jones D.M.(1986).
Revival. Marshall Pickering.

[8] Davies G.. Understanding Parish Growth Stages, Diocese
of Sydney.

[9] It may be argued that most small rural churches do not
have a lively spiritual fellowship at their core, but just people turning up on
Sunday, out of routine, demanding the services of a minister, and with no
interest of putting anything spiritual into the church themselves. But it is
this information that would needed to be known before any attempt at closing a
churches would need to be made. Size alone does not determine viability.